Issues as Congress opens

Snags include taking of oath, debate over reading of Constitution

Published 12:01 am, Friday, January 7, 2011

WASHINGTON -- If you are a member of the House and you plan to read the text of the Constitution on the floor, it's probably a good idea to have already taken the oath to support and defend it first.

But one new member, Rep. Mike Fitzpatrick, a Republican from Pennsylvania who failed to be officially sworn in Wednesday, proceeded nonetheless to participate in the reading, one of the first official acts of House members in the 112th Congress.

At the time of the oath-taking, both Fitzpatrick and Rep. Pete Sessions of Texas were elsewhere, watching the proceedings on television.

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Both men were sworn in Thursday afternoon. Before that happened, a Rules Committee hearing had to be halted because Sessions was taking part in it, and both men had cast votes on the floor. House leaders were conferring to see how to make things right.

The oath-taking foul-up was not the only opening week boo-boo. During the reading of the Constitution, because of an inadvertent double page turn, Section 4 of Article IV was skipped, as was a part of Article V. (It was entered into the record later.). The proceeding was interrupted by a protester questioning President Barack Obama's place of birth. And an argument began on the floor over the version of the Constitution being read.

The leaders of the House had decided to read a version of the Constitution that was edited to exclude those portions superseded by amendments -- including amendments themselves -- preventing lawmakers from having to make references to slaves, referred to in Article I, Section 2 as "three fifths of all other Persons" or to failed experiments like Prohibition.

Rep. Jesse L. Jackson Jr., D-Ill., argued that the House was revising history and ignoring the blood, sweat and tears paid to achieve the amendments.

In bookend moments of modern identity politics, there was a standing ovation when Rep. John Lewis, the black Democrat from Georgia, who was a leader in the civil rights movement, read the 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery. A protester had to be removed from the gallery after yelling out "except Obama" as Rep. Frank Pallone Jr., read that "no person, except a natural-born citizen, or a citizen of the United States" is eligible for the presidency.